HeadSpill

Wedding
So I’m at the wedding of some friends in Windermere, it’s December, cold, and the ceremony is at the bit where the bride throws the bouquet. As the bunch of flowers flies into the air behind her I try to take a photo but all I can hear is my girlfriend shouting the word ‘baggsied!’ (a term meaning ‘get off, it’s mine’). According to tradition I am now next in line to get married. Apparently.

The Speaker
I’ve done some filming with ther BBC for a new show called ‘The speaker’ (see more here: www.bbc.co.uk/speaker ) which goes out in January on BBC 2. It’s a competition to find Britain’s best young speaker and after every new episode there’s a new short film published online covering a day in the life of someone who’s job is public speaking. One week It’ll be a singer, another week a teacher, and then I’m on week 6 or thereabouts talking about being a comic.

The recording took place at a small gig in Stockport which was lovely, so I’m hoping it shows in the broadcast.

Fallout 3
The last 2 months my life has been sucked dry by the gaming pleasure of Fallout 3. The joy of wandering around a post apocalyptic landscape listening to ‘I dont want top set the world on fire’, and shooting big monsters with bigger guns was the best game I’ve played in yonks. I want my life back now.

Telly
As you may or may not know I’m a massive fan of old and cult telly; everything from Quatermass and Starfleet (the puppet version, not the roddenbery one) to Edge of Darkness and my all time favourite Day of the Triffids (BBC ‘81 version), which is currently being remade, thanks to the success of New Doctor Who and the recent remake of Survivors.
Survivors, a  show from the 70’s was all about everyone dying out from a virus, this time a bird-flu type epidemic. It’s been all been a bit too sexy for my liking, not enough grime and unpleasentness. My biggest problem, however was the last episode didn’t actually end and just stopped as it got going to leave you wanting more, which is a bit rubbish.

Bye Bye 2008
It’s nearly the end of 2008, a time to reflect on what 2008 brought and set goals for 2009. For me the biggest achievments have been my edinburgh show,  despite the successs not being large in commercial terms I feel I’ve evolved as a comic. Also going fully self employed, which as no small task and will probably form the basis of a show in 2009.

Goodbye to the man.
I am now the man. My own boss. In October handed in my notice and filled in my first fax return to go self employed. It was and is a big deal.

Balancing life and work is not an easy equation, you can either have time or money. Ever since I decided I wanted to be a comic back in 2001 It soon became apparent that time was needed to write, travel and perform. This is opposed by work, or more specifically money. Money to travel, pay rent, eat and live generally.

Some comics, even pro comics still do work other than comedy to pay the bills.  It doesn’t make them any less gifted as comics, but it’s merely a temporary means of supplementing their career, nothing more.

I’m a comedian. I’m also a middleweight graphic designer and have been for a while, with a ‘career’ job, the kind agencies advertise for in newspapers, and can pay quite hansomely, up to 30k in some places.

Q. Which of the above titles is more valid?

‘Middleweight’ might sound grand but I never called myself ‘middleweight’ by choice. I was told I was ‘middleweight’ by an agency bod over the phone once when they asked what I could do, I still prefer simply ‘designer’, if at all. It took me years to confidently say I’m a comedian, and anyone can use that title simply by getting on stage for 5 minutes.

A. neither. 

I’d managed to negociate reduced hours to accomodate my career in comedy, which didn’t happen overnight, but even then the more time I’d had the more I wanted to fully capitalise on the gig opportunities I was getting.

I spoke to a few freelancers, most had become freelancers due to other commitments or because they’d never been in full time employment and couldn’t ever see themselves staying in the same place for long time.

People I know who are self employed are the most overworked people I know, they don’t have a pay cheque coming in at the end of the month, so whatever work they get needs to be done as soon as possible. Also while they are doing that work they need to be looking for more work and selling themselves to do when that work is done.

I went to to ‘business start up’ seminar. I thought it would help and it did, but not in the way I thought. The main lessons I pretty much already knew from chasing comedy bookings, self confidence, go out and get the work, have an angle thats uniquely yours.

I liked freelancing, and started doing some out of hours work as well as gigs (no time to socialise), but did nothing to get more, thinking it too unstable and irregular to take seriously. Though suppose I knew the real reason wasn’t this, or abilty, but somthing more substantial. Fear.

Fear is a great motivator. You can do a lot of things with it. I’d never not had a full time job and couldn’t fathom how I’d survive without a regular pay packet at the end of the month. Even though some months gigs and freelance paid plently.

Life had become like ’stone soup’, the story where a traveller puts a stone in a pot, adds water and veg and makes stone soup. He deceives the locals it’s the stone that makes the tastey broth, when in actuality it’s all the other stuff thats added that makes it wholesome.  I was making stone soup and focusing on the stone.

The next day I handed my notice in. That was 3 months ago.  I’ve not looked back.

I did my first Leeds tryout at Jongleurs last week, and if I’m honest a previous week of no gigs made me rusty when I needed to be ‘gig fit’. It’s a tough gig at the best of times, and worse if you’re in comedy for the art. This was swiftly rectified the next night when I did my first gig in a Jewish synagogue doing a half hour for the Jewish new year. Not the easiest of crowds either, but a good few of them recognised me from the comedysportz gig the previous week at the Comedy Store, which made the whole thing immediately more enjoyable. Someone commented on my big nose. Racist.

I got to meet one of my all time heroes this week too. Neil Innes, he of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah band, at Bury Met. He’d didn’t play as much Bonzo’s as I’d like, but then I’m sure he’s pig sick of playing the same requests all the time. I was in proper fan mode and got my 40th anniversary bonzos tour t-shirt signed.

September has been incredibly quiet for gigs, almost like Edinburgh didn’t happen, my poor little ego going unloved and feeling sorry for itself. There’s a shedload in the pipeline fortunetly, including a return to the glorious Edinburgh stand in late october and a Darlington run out for my show in November.

Utter Joy. If you were to list my favourite things in order they would pretty much be comedy, Doctor Who, cider,  comics and animation. So when I’m asked if I’d like to mc a Doctor Who Convention all about comics in a pub, I had to check I hadn’t fallen through a whole in my own mind and mistaken reality for a wish list.

Meeting the organiser Gareth I hoped I did’nt come over as a gob*****, as everything he spoke of I knew something about,  but it’s just true.  Doing my small press comic back in the 90’s I’d been to comic conventions and met some of the artists who are coming. Doing flash animation for the ‘Get Happy’ show a year back, I’d bumped into Firestep, the guys who did the WHO infinite quest animation, and been to their studio. And of course Doctor Who itself, I’d only just rewatched some vintage McCoy the previous night. It’s like it was meant to be, weird.

It’s great news too as ‘forgot’ to put my show in for the Manchester comedy festival, but I am in the Literature Fest Brochure twice, so I can’t complain.

I have a new gig to mc. hurray!

I can’t complain even though I’m already too busy with Edinburgh stuff, but I had been eyeing up the Carlton Club, a gig venue just down the road, since I moved late last year.  I’d been put off as it said on the sign outside ‘member’s only’, but then when I passed the other there was a big banner out front advertising the ‘Celebrate Whalley Range Festival and the ‘members’ bit was covered up. It was all but over by the time I went for a nosey, but a few enquiries later, and I was having a meeting discussing a comedy night, which they were after. There’s work to be done promoting it, and time will tell if it works out, but first impressions, and seeing that they’ve got a newsletter and roster of events, suggest that this very established venue is having a bit of  a renaissance. Today is a good day.

I’m writing my new show. I’ve been promising myself for years I’d go to Edinburgh and now have the venue, and more importantly the cash to do it. Even though I’m doing a free fringe show, after accomodation, advertising and expenses I’m probably looking at a couple of grand for the month of August. At the minute I only have about five to ten minutes, and two preview dates, but even now at the back end of Febuary I’m little excited. I don’t have any rose tinted visions, it will be work, and I intend to keep my mind clear of expectation…

My history of doing a show is as follows:
Manchester fest 2005 - no one came.
Leicester fest preview 2006 - technical problems halfway into show.
Manchester fest 2006 preview  @ Comedy Balloon - large Success
Manchester fest 2006 show @ Zumeba - A week before the festival the venue is sold and turned into a trendy wine bar.
Frog & Bucket Edinburgh Preview 2007 - Too much teching, not enough stand up. An attempt to do something different, but a bit of a failure. Plug pulled.

The new show is very personal. I was thinking about doing it a year or so ago, but felt it was biting off more than I could chew which in hindsight is ironic considering I went on to put together a show that was all interactive multimedia. What I probably meant was I was too afraid of looking at the history of my eczema condition for the pain it might cause, and then not be funny.

There’s lots of work to be done writing and research, but in the few gigs I’ve done, openly talking about eczema, it’s been quite a soul feeding excercise. So far so good.

Since I came back from the US I have work coming out my ears. Some good, and some utter bobbins-but-needs-doing-to-pay-the-bills. Gigs are slowly picking up as the new season approaches, and there’s been plently of freelance stuff on, but some things still need doing, like the small matter of looking for a flat with my partner of seven months, she’s in Edinburgh at the moment and I’m not. Not that I’m jealous or anything, I’m not (Grrrrrr). When she returns we begin the hard veiwing and staring and looking process. Having done one viewing myslef recently just to familiarise myself with the process, i now have my bull**** meter turned up to eleven to dismiss anything and everthing I hear from anyone from a lettings agency. If and when I, er, we, find somewhere we like, I reserve the right to fiddle with taps, poke things down radiators, sniff paint and afterwards drive to the property at night to measure the distance to the nearest shop selling fresh bread and monitor how long it take for two kids to drive past that constiutes ‘gang activity’ until I am wholely satisfyed that the new abode is a silent but accessable stealth castle, in which the feng shui will prevent all arguements from ever happening, and there is a wall big enough to for me to hook up my projector to my HD laptop with the Geforce 8600gt inside it and play Oblivion with the widescreen settings on, 8ft wide, like it’s on at the IMAX down the town. Such a place exists, I just need to find it.